Blizzard President Admits to Botched Diablo 3 Launch
Mike Morhaime offers a lengthy discussion about the past, the present, and the future state of Diablo 3.
In a rather lengthy letter to Diablo 3 players on the Battle.net forums, Blizzard president Mike Morhaime presents a makeshift State-of-the-Union-type update on the game, talking about the launch and the game's progression over the last several months, to where the popular action-RPG is headed. He also thanks the community for their passion and affection for the Diablo series, for sharing their experiences that have helped improve the game overall.
First and foremost he admitted his utter pleasure in the sales numbers, saying that Diablo 3 had the biggest PC gaming launch ever, surpassing even the lifetime sales of World of Warcraft's third expansion and previous PC launch record holder, Cataclysm, in a matter of weeks. But he also acknowledged that the launch was plagued by problems that the team simply did not expect.
"We’ve never gone from 0 to more than 6 million players across multiple continents within a few days with a brand-new game," he said. "For Diablo 3, we looked at historical sales for Blizzard games and other top-selling PC games and watched pre-order numbers. We even upped our estimates to ensure we had additional capacity, or so we thought. In the end, it just wasn’t enough, and that is something we will work hard to conquer for future releases."
The immediate and overwhelming demand for the game has kept the team working around the clock to support all regions, increase capacity, ship additional hardware to Blizzard's data centers, and troubleshoot and fix bugs as they spring up, he said. Over the past several weeks things have "by and large" been running smoothly, but there are still issues that the team is still trying to resolve like latency problems for many players.
"Rather than address every subject individually, I’ll just say that even as we work to address or resolve current issues, it’s always possible that further issues will crop up," he said. "We hope that our actions in the past have demonstrated that above all else, we’re committed to delivering an awesome game experience, and we hope you’ll have faith that we will continue to keep that commitment and respond to any new or outstanding issues quickly."
So what's in Diablo 3's future? Buffs to many rarely used, underpowered class abilities. Patch 1.0.4 will include new and improved Legendary items that are more interesting, more powerful, and more epic in ways players probably won’t be expecting, he said. There are also a number of interface updates in the works such as social improvements that will allow players to more easily join games and communicate with their friends. The auction house is also receiving a boost in search functionality and more.
To read the full State of the Union to Diablo 3 players, head here. Get a little snack and maybe someone to cuddle with before you read it, though.
There was no work at it, just repetitive slashing for gold.. yellows i broke down, VERY rarely sold and for what? Gold? to buy more yellows? to farm yellows? to buy yellows?
Same monsters over and over, just more abilities. It was just.. too little.
Oh well.
Couldn't agree more, the game felt far too anaemic.
There was no work at it, just repetitive slashing for gold.. yellows i broke down, VERY rarely sold and for what? Gold? to buy more yellows? to farm yellows? to buy yellows?
Same monsters over and over, just more abilities. It was just.. too little.
Oh well.
Couldn't agree more, the game felt far too anaemic.
All I want to do is finish the game on Normal and that's it, I see no reason to repeat it another 3 times... And before you ask, it was a bday present from friends, so I didn't actually buy it, winning
I'm not sure what you expected, that is pretty much what Diablo 2 was. Well except that to get better gear you need to use the AH in D3 because crap for your class rarely drops, which is super annoying.
Don't worry, it will never happen again !!
actually, no. I know quite a bunch of players that have more fun going back to D2...
i bought the CE in anticipation of something the same or beter then d2... which turned out was a big let down... lets just say that i played more d2 on launch day then d3....
can somone please explain how we can get that SHIT, when there was 4-5 years worked on it?
someone buy me a full fledge fucking engine and il make something hundred times better then that crap. not that i think much of myself, just that i dont think i can make something that shit.
the ONLY thing diablo 3 did that was good/unique is the character attack animations. rest is bullshit...
http://www.techatron.net/2012/07/south-pole-is-on-street-view.html